Pages

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Ilon Bergere (1871-1944) played Ozma, the Rose Princess, in The Tik-Tok Man of Oz for awhile during the post-Chicago tour. Born in Budapest, Hungary, she married businessman David Bauer of St. Louis, Missouri. When he died, Ilon pursued a stage career to support herself and her two young children. Her first role was in E. Van Alstyne's musical comedy The Broken Idol. She came to prominence on Broadway playing Mascha in Oscar Straus's The Chocolate Soldier with Charles Purcell, who later played Private Files starting in San Francisco. Ilon's pre-Tik-Tok Man career included roles in The Gay Hussars on Broadway as well as in Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado at the Tivoli Theatre in San Francisco. By 1917 she and Charles Purcell were married. She died in San Bernardino, California. Her son Monroe Bauer Purcell was a pianist for Margarita Padula and Co.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Biographies of the cast of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz are now online. To see them, click the BIOS link on the menu bar above or click here.

I had gathered bios and headshots to print in a handsomely designed program for the performance on August 9, 2014. But time slipped through my fingers. The night before the show I whipped out a minimal program that would suffice, but bios and photos didn't make it in. I promised myself to publish them all on the website, so here they are.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

This partially reconstructed list of the performance schedule of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz during its original ten-month production in 1913-14 is expanded from research begun by Patrick Maund. The following list incorporates additions and corrections to the list of touring dates for the show included as a sidebar to my article "Guaranteed for a Thousand Years" in The Winkie Con 50 Program Book. Further additions and
corrections are welcome. I'll add them as I receive them.

UPDATE: The following information has been supplemented according to research by Scott Cummings.Citation: Cummings, S. "The Tik-Tok Man of Oz 1913-14 Tour Dates" in The Baum
Bugle, vol. 58, no. 3 (Winter 2014). San Francisco: The International
Wizard of Oz Club, Inc., p. 40.

The following information is incorrect according to Cummings's list, but I include it here apart from the main list, pending further investigation. These dates and theaters may have been originally scheduled, then later cancelled:

September 27(?) – Cleveland, Ohio – Colonial Theater

(date unknown) – Kalamazoo, Michigan – Fuller Theater

November 17 – Galesburg, Illinois

November 20 – Bloomington, Illinois

* In my possession is an original newspaper ad for the second Oakland run, which lists the dates as January 8-10. Cummings lists the second Oakland run as January 6-7, which actually makes sense of the previously confusing dates for the Bakersfield performance and the possible Riverside performance. Performance dates for Oakland could easily have been changed after the newspaper ad was published, so I'm offering Cummings's Oakland schedule as the preferred one. The now un-preferred info is:

January 9(?) – Bakersfield, California – Bakersfield Opera House (This
date from a Bakersfield Morning Echo announcement, January 8, 1913, conflicts with the
substantiated dates of January 8-10 when the show played in Oakland. Was the
Bakersfield performance cancelled?)

January (?) – Riverside, California – Loring Theater (It’s uncertain that the show played Riverside.
Perhaps it was scheduled, possibly on January 8 or 10, then cancelled, similar
to the possible Bakersfield cancellation.)

Monday, September 8, 2014

For The Winkie Con 50 Program Book I wrote an article, “Guaranteed for a Thousand Years,” that covers the history of L. Frank Baum's 1913 musical The Tik-Tok Man of Oz from the earliest news reports in 1907 through rehearsals for Clockwork Productions's 2014 staging. The article appears on pages 113-72. It contains a number of errors. I've noted them below with corrections.

Frank F. Moore as the Shaggy Man and James C. Morton as Tik-Tok, 1913.

Page [121], line nineteen: for "hundred were assembled" read "hundred was assembled"

Page [123], line two: for "Fred C. Woodward" read "Fred Woodward"

Page [126],
column one, line nineteen: for “tiger were added.” read “tiger were added—although
a tiger appears in at least one photograph that seems to be from the earlier March
1913 rehearsal period.”

Page [127],
caption, line three: for “reported in to consist” read “reported to consist”

Page [129], first caption, line two: for "comtemplates" read "contemplates"

Saturday, September 6, 2014

One primary goal of reviving Baum and Gottschalk's vintage stage musical The Tik-Tok Man of Oz was to give audience members the chance to hear all the surviving musical numbers in performance. Fourteen songs for the show with lyrics by L. Frank Baum and music by Louis F. Gottschalk survive. One instrumental piece by Gottschalk survives. Three songs written for the show with lyrics by Oliver Morosco and music by Victor Schertzinger survive. One song written by Victor Schertzinger survives. These nineteen numbers were all part of the performance on August 9, 2014.

Two of the commercially released selections of Gottschalk music from The Tik-Tok Man of Oz were performed as well. The main "Selection" served as the Overture. The "Lanciers" served as the Entr'acte.

At least twelve musical numbers from the original 1913-14 production are not known to survive. Gottschalk's music for "A Storm at Sea" is one that's gone. To fill this hole, "Bacchanal Dance" by Gottschalk from his unproduced score for Julius, Sieze Her! was substituted, modified by musical director Joseph Grienenberger to fit the action of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz Prelude.

No finale survives for either Act One or Act Two. For the Act One finale, lyrics by L. Frank Baum in the earliest existing script for the show, a version from 1909, were slightly modified by Eric Shanower to fit a combination of music from "Ask the Flowers to Tell You" and "The Army of Oogaboo." For the Act Two finale, the chorus of "The Magnet of Love" was reprised by the entire company.

Cover of published "Ask the Flowers to Tell You" sheet music.

Beyond the fourteen surviving songs with lyrics by Baum, many other Baum lyrics survive in the 1909 version of the script. With one exception these do not have music and it's unclear whether any of them were used in the original 1913-14 production. They were not performed in this production. The one exception is "Fight for Oogaboo" with lyrics by Baum that clearly fit Gottschalk's music for "The Army of Oogaboo." Although "Fight for Oogaboo" was performed in the original production, it was not performed in this.

Two known interpolations to the original production—"Forgotten" with lyrics attributed to Flora Wulschner and music by Eugene Cowles, and "One, Two, Three, It's All Over Now," lyricist and composer unknown—were not included in this performance.

All the surviving Tik-Tok Man of Oz music was never included in a single performance of the original production. Songs came and went during its ten month run. But this production fit all the surviving songs into one performance. Over the course of the original production, songs were assigned to different characters. Our production generally assigned each song to the character or characters that primarily sang it in the original. Parts sung by a chorus in the original production were generally sung by principal characters in this.

Baum's lyrics for Tik-Tok's verse in "Folly!" are racially insensitive. Eric Shanower revised them for this production to eliminate mention of an African native eating a missionary.

Listed here are the musical numbers performed in Clockwork Productions's The Tik-Tok Man of Oz. Joseph
Grienenberger was the musical director and played keyboard for the performance. Unless otherwise noted,
Grienenberger—working from piano/vocal sheet music—orchestrated the music for Michael Fowler (trumpet), Fred
Allee (drums and percussion), and Rafael Estrada (double bass).

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Clockwork Productions's presentation of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz performed on August 9, 2014, as the Saturday evening program of Winkie Con 50 at the Town and Country Hotel, 500 Hotel Circle North, San Diego, California, for an audience of about two hundred and fifty.

The Shaggy Man arrives in the Rose Kingdom, with Hank, Moss Rose, Jacque Rose, and Betsy.

Preparations continued up until the last moment—I was hanging mirror-ball fruit onto the metal forest trees for Act 2, Scene 2, just an hour before the performance began. The show was a triumph, due to the efforts of all involved. Appreciative comments from the audience afterward focused on the performance of ten-year-old Alyson Stein as the gymnastic Royal Gardener and on the beautiful voices of the principal singers—Tamara Rodriguez as Polychrome probably was mentioned most often. The audience took favorable notice of Eduard Cao's comic timing as the Shaggy Man. Chris Boltz's lighting as well as Eric Shanower and David Maxine's costumes also garnered praise. Negative reaction was primarily reserved for L. Frank Baum's script.

I'd also like to thank: Infinity Dance Arts, 1075 Broadway, El Cajon, California, for generously donating audition and rehearsal space and loaning some costumes and props; Ellen Joy Weber, Candice Hooper, and Christian Esquevin of the Coronado Public Library in Coronado, California, for loaning a prop; Freddy Fogarty for giving permission to publish his photos, for which he reserves all rights, on this post; and all donors who are listed here.